Presently she
perceived, after much peeping into this corner and that corner, a
hatchet, which the bricklayers had left behind, sticking out of the
ceiling right above her head. At the sight of this Clever Alice began
to cry, saying, "Oh! if I marry Hans, and we have a child, and he
grows up, and we send him into the cellar to draw beer, the hatchet
will fall upon his head and kill him;" and so she sat there weeping
with all her might over the impending misfortune.
Meanwhile the good folks upstairs were waiting for the beer, but as
Clever Alice did not come, her mother told the maid to go and see what
she was stopping for. The maid went down into the cellar, and found
Alice sitting before the cask crying heartily, and she asked, "Alice,
what are you weeping about?"
"Ah," she replied, "have I not cause? If I marry Hans, and we have a
child, and he grow up, and we send him here to draw beer, that hatchet
will fall upon his head and kill him."
"Oh," said the maid, "what a clever Alice we have!" And, sitting down,
she began to weep, too, for the misfortune that was to happen.
After a while, when the servant did not return, the good folks above
began to feel very thirsty; so the husband told the boy to go down
into the cellar, and see what had become of Alice and the maid. The
boy went down, and there sat Clever Alice and the maid both crying,
so he asked the reason; and Alice told him the same tale, of the
hatchet that was to fall on her child, if she married Hans, and if
they had a child.
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